I refuse to accept the Bible as a moral guide because it sanctions lying and deception.

“And the Lord said, Who shall persuade Ahab that he may go up and fall at Ramoth-gilead? And one said on this manner, and another said on that manner. And there came forth a spirit and stood before the Lord, and said, I will persuade him. And the Lord said unto him, Wherewith? And he said, I will go forth, and I will be a lying spirit in the mouth of all his prophets. And he said, Thou shalt persuade him, and prevail also; go forth and do so. Now therefore, behold the Lord hath put a lying spirit in the mouth of all these, thy prophets” (1 Kings xxii, 20–23).

“If the prophet be deceived when he hath spoken a thing, I the Lord have deceived that prophet” (Ezek. xiv, 9).

“O Lord, thou hast deceived me” (Jer. xx, 7).

“Wilt thou [God] be altogether unto me as a liar?” (Jer. xv, 18.)

“God shall send them strong delusion that they should believe a lie” (2 Thess. ii, 11).

Respecting the forbidden fruit God said: “In the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die” (Gen. ii, 17). But the serpent said, “Ye shall not surely die” (iii, 4). Satan’s declaration proved true, God’s declaration proved untrue. Thus, according to the Bible, the first truth told to man was told by the devil; the first lie told to man was told by God.

In regard to the promised land God says: “Doubtless ye shall not come into the land, concerning which I sware to make you dwell therein, ... and ye shall know my breach of promise” (Num. xiv, 30–34).

God commands Moses to deceive Pharaoh (Ex. iii, 18), he rewards the midwives for their deception (Ex. i, 15–20), and instructs Samuel to deceive Saul (1 Sam. xvi, 2).

“And the Lord said unto Samuel, ... fill thine horn with oil, and go, I will send thee to Jesse the Beth-lehemite: for I have provided me a king among his sons. And Samuel said, How can I go? if Saul hear it he will kill me. And the Lord said, Take a heifer with thee, and say, I am come to sacrifice to the Lord.”

Would an omnipotent and a just God use falsehood and deceit? If there be such a God we must believe that he is an honest and a truthful Being. But this God of the Bible violates nearly every pledge he makes, and instructs his children to lie and deceive.

The patriarchs all follow his example and instructions. Abraham tries to deceive Pharaoh and Abimelech (Gen. xii, 13–19; xx, 2); Sarah tries to deceive the Lord himself (Gen. xviii, 13–15). Abraham becomes the parent of a liar. Isaac said of Rebecca, his wife, “She is my sister” (Gen. xxvi, 7). Rebecca in turn deceives her husband (Gen. xxvii, 6–17). Jacob sustains the reputation of the family for lying.

“And he came unto his father, and said, My father; and he said, Here am I; who art thou, my son? And Jacob said unto his father, I am Esau, thy first-born.... And he discerned him not, so he blessed him. And he said, Art thou my very son, Esau? And he said, I am” (Gen. xxvii, 18–24).

Jacob’s wives, Leah and Rachel, both used deceit. The former deceived her husband (Gen. xxix, 25); the latter deceived her father (Gen. xxxi, 34, 35). His twelve sons were all addicted to the same vice (Gen. xxxvii; xlii, 7), and these became the founders of the twelve tribes of Israel, God’s chosen people.

David, Elisha, and Jeremiah, three of God’s holiest men, were liars (1 Sam. xxvii, 8–11; 2 Kings, viii, 7–15; Jer. xxxviii, 24–27).

Speaking of the Hebrews and Bible writers prior to the Exile and the introduction of Persian ethics, Dr. Briggs says:

“They seem to know nothing of the sin of speaking lies as such. What is the evidence from this silence? They were altogether unconscious of its sinfulness. The holiest men did not hesitate to lie, whenever they had a good object in view, and they showed no consciousness of sin in it. And the writers who tell of their lies are as innocent as they.”

The Decalogue itself does not forbid lying. It forbids perjury; but mere lying is not forbidden.

Christ taught in parables that he might deceive the people.

“And he said unto them, Unto you it is given to know the mystery of the kingdom of God, but unto them that are without, all these things are done in parables: That seeing they may see, and not perceive; and hearing they may hear, and not understand; lest at any time they should be converted, and their sins should be forgiven them” (Mark iv, 11, 12).

Paul used deception and boasted of it. He says:

“Being crafty, I caught you with guile” (2 Cor. xii, 16).

“Unto the Jews I became as a Jew, that I might gain the Jews” (1 Cor. ix, 20).

“I am made all things to all men” (1 Cor. ix, 22).

“For if the truth of God hath more abounded through my lie unto his glory, why yet am I also judged as a sinner?” (Rom. iii, 7.)

The primitive Christians, accepting the Bible as infallible authority, naturally regarded lying for God’s glory not a vice but a virtue. Mosheim in his “Ecclesiastical History” says:

“It was an established maxim with many Christians, that it was pardonable in an advocate for religion to avail himself of fraud and deception, if it were likely they might conduce toward the attainment of any considerable good.”

Dean Milman, in his “History of Christianity,” says: “It was admitted and avowed that to deceive into Christianity was so valuable a service as to hallow deceit itself.”

Dr. Lardner says: “Christians of all sorts were guilty of this fraud.”

Bishop Fell writes: “In the first ages of the church, so extensive was the license of forging, so credulous were the people in believing that the evidence of transactions was grievously obscured.”

M. DaillÉ, one of the most distinguished of French Protestants, says: “For a good end they made no scruple to forge whole books.”

Dr. Gieseler says they “quieted their conscience respecting the forgery with the idea of their good intention.”

Dr. Priestley says they “thought it innocent and commendable to lie for the sake of truth.”

Scaliger says: “They distrusted the success of Christ’s kingdom without the aid of lying.”

That these admissions are true, that primitive Christianity was propagated chiefly by falsehood, is tacitly admitted by all Christians. They characterize as forgeries, or unworthy of credit, three-fourths of the early Christian writings.

The thirty-second chapter of the Twelfth Book of Eusebius’s “Evangelical Preparation” bears this significant title: “How far it may be proper to use falsehood as a medicine, and for the benefit of those who require to be deceived.”

Bishop Heliodorus affirms that a “falsehood is a good thing when it aids the speaker and does no harm to the hearers.”

Synesius, another early Christian bishop, writes: “The people are desirous of being deceived; we cannot act otherwise with them.”

That is what most modern theologians think. With Dr. Thomas Burnett, they believe that “Too much light is hurtful to weak eyes.”

That the methods employed in establishing the church are still used in perpetuating its power, a glance at the so-called Christian literature of the day will suffice to show. Read the works of our sectarian publishers, examine the volumes that compose our Sunday-school libraries, peruse our religious papers and periodicals, and you will see that age has but confirmed this habit formed in infancy.

Every church dogma is a lie; and based upon lies, the church depends upon fraud for its support. The work of its ministers is not to discover and promulgate truths, but to invent and disseminate falsehoods. In the words of Isaiah, they well might say: “We have made lies our refuge, and under falsehood have we hid ourselves.”

The church offers a premium on falsehood and imposes a punishment for truthfulness. With a bribe in one hand and a club in the other, she has sought to prolong her sway. The allurements of the one and the fear of the other have filled the world with hypocrisy. In our halls of Congress, in the editorial sanctum, in the professor’s chair, behind the counter, in the workshop, at the fireside, everywhere, we find men professing to believe what they know to be false, or wearing the seal of silence on their lips, while rank imposture stalks abroad and truth is trampled in the mire before them.

Every truth seeker is taunted and ridiculed; every truth teller persecuted and defamed; the scientist and philosopher are discouraged and opposed; the heretic and Infidel calumniated and maligned. In proof of this, witness the abuse heaped upon the Darwins and Huxleys, see the countless calumnies circulated against the Paines and Ingersolls.

It is said that Paulus Jovius kept a bank of lies. To those who paid him liberally he gave noble pedigrees and reputations; those who did not he slandered and maligned. Paulus is dead, but the church, guided by Bible morality, continues his business.

I refuse to accept the Bible as a moral guide, because it sanctions cheating and the use of dishonorable methods in obtaining wealth and power.

“And Jacob sod [boiled] pottage; and Esau came from the fields, and he was faint; and Esau said to Jacob, Feed me, I pray thee, with that same red pottage; for I am faint.... And Jacob said, Sell me this day thy birthright. And Esau said, Behold, I am at the point to die; and what profit shall this birthright do me? And Jacob said, Swear to me this day; and he sware unto him; and he sold his birthright unto Jacob. Then Jacob gave Esau bread and pottage of lentils; and he did eat and rose up and went away” (Gen. xxv, 29–34).

This transaction, one of the basest recorded, receives the sanction of the Bible. Jacob, with God’s assistance, by using striped rods, cheated Laban out of his cattle:

“And it came to pass, whensoever the stronger cattle did conceive, that Jacob laid the rods before the eyes of the cattle in the gutters, that they might conceive among the rods.

“When the cattle were feeble, he put them not in; so the feebler were Laban’s and the stronger Jacob’s. And the man increased exceedingly, and had much cattle” (Gen. xxx, 41–43).

“If he [Laban] said thus, The speckled shall be thy wages; then all the cattle bare speckled; and if he said thus, The ringstreaked shall be thy hire; then bare all the cattle ringstreaked. Thus God hath taken away the cattle of your father and given them to me” (Gen. xxxi, 8, 9).

Thus, by defrauding his uncle, his famishing brother, and his blind and aged father, this God-beloved

patriarch stands forth the prince of cheats—the patron saint of rogues.

The Israelites obtain the Egyptians’ property by false pretenses.

“And I [God] will give this people favor in the sight of the Egyptians; and it shall come to pass that when ye go, ye shall not go empty; but every woman shall borrow of her neighbor, and of her that sojourneth in her house, jewels of silver and jewels of gold, and raiment; and ye shall put them upon your sons and upon your daughters; and ye shall spoil [rob] the Egyptians” (Ex. iii, 21, 22).

“And the Lord said unto Moses, ... Speak now in the ears of the people, and let every man borrow of his neighbor, and every woman of her neighbor, jewels of silver, and jewels of gold” (Ex xi, 1, 2).

“And the children of Israel did according to the word of Moses; and they borrowed of the Egyptians jewels of silver, and jewels of gold, and raiment; and the Lord gave the people favor in the sight of the Egyptians, so that they lent unto them such things as they required; and they spoiled the Egyptians” (Ex. xii, 35, 36).

Here obtaining goods under false pretenses and embezzlement are commended by God himself. It may be claimed that the Egyptians had wronged the Israelites. Suppose they had; could God secure justice for them only by treachery and fraud? Suppose your son worked for a farmer, and that farmer defrauded him of his wages; would you advise your son to borrow a horse of his employer and decamp with it in order to obtain redress, especially when you had the power to obtain redress by lawful means? Instead of encouraging these slaves in an act that would eventually lead them to become a race of thieves and robbers, an honest God would have taken their masters by the collar and said, “You have received the labor of these men and women; pay them for it!”

In the Mosaic law we find the following beautiful statute:

“Ye shall not eat of anything that dieth of itself; thou shalt give it unto the stranger that is in thy gates, that he may eat it, or thou mayest sell it unto an alien” (Deut. xiv, 21).

“Anything that dieth of itself” is diseased. Diseased flesh is poisonous. To authorize its use, even if those receiving it are not deceived, is immoral.

Out West, a family, good Christians, had a hog to die of some disease. What did they do with it? Eat it? No, their Bible told them this would be wrong. They dressed it nicely, took it into an adjoining neighborhood, and sold it to strangers. Was this right? The Bible says it was.

With the widespread influence of a book inculcating such lessons in dishonesty, what must be the inevitable result? Men distrust their fellow men; along our business thoroughfares Fraud drives with brazen front; in almost every article of merchandise we buy we find a lie enshrined; at every corner sits some Jacob slyly whittling spotted sticks to win his neighbor’s flocks.

I refuse to accept the Bible as a moral guide because it sanctions theft and robbery.

Its pages teem with accounts of robberies, and in many instances God is said to have planned them and shared in the spoils. He instructs Moses to send a marauding expedition against the Midianites. They put the inhabitants to the sword, and return with 800,000 cattle. Of this booty God exacts 800 head for himself and 8,000 head for his priests. The remainder he causes to be divided between the soldiers and citizens. So elated are the Israelites with their success, so grateful to God for his assistance, that they make him a gift of 16,000 shekels of stolen gold (Num. xxxi).

When Joshua took Jericho, “they burnt the city with fire, and all that was therein; only the silver, and the gold, and the vessels of brass and of iron they put into the treasury of the Lord” (Josh, vi, 19–24).

When he captured Ai, “the cattle and the spoils of that city Israel took for a prey unto themselves, according unto the word of the Lord which he commanded Joshua” (Josh, viii, 27).

Jehovah gets the spoils of Jericho, and Israel those of Ai.

David, a modest shepherd lad, is placed under the tutelage of Jehovah only to become the cruelest robber of his time. On one occasion, purely for plunder, he despoiled three nations and “saved neither man nor woman alive to bring tidings to Gath, saying, Lest they should tell on us” (1 Sam. xxvii, 8–12).

It is said that the Italian bandit never plans a robbery without invoking a divine blessing upon his undertaking, doubtless believing that the God of David, of Moses, and of Joshua still reigns.

Jacob’s wives, Leah and Rachel, were both thieves. Leah appropriated the property of her son; Rachel stole her father’s jewels. Neither act was condemned.

“When thou comest into thy neighbor’s vineyard, then thou mayest eat grapes thy fill at thine own pleasure, but thou shalt not put any in thy vessel.

“When thou comest into the standing corn of thy neighbor, then thou mayest pluck the ears with thine hand; but thou shalt not move a sickle unto thy neighbor’s standing corn” (Deut. xxiii, 24, 25).

“Men do not despise a thief, if he steal to satisfy his soul when he is hungry” (Prov. vi, 30).

Grand larceny is condemned, but petty larceny is commended.

Christ enjoined submission to robbery: “Of him that taketh away thy goods ask them not again” (Luke vi, 30).